Kaikoura... The Whaling Days...

 This is the southern end of the Kaikoura Peninsula walkway.

 At Limestone Bay...

 There are excellent maps and lots of walks information and

good historical information and Maori myths.

 We walked round here...

 Only as far as where the track goes up the hill. I will

go back, take a picnic lunch and walk the whole track.

 But today, we turned around and walked the other way...

 Through the picnic reserve to the remains of

the South Bay whaling industry.

 The whaling industry attracted the earliest European settlers to

 the area. Whales occur here because of the unusually deep waters

close to shore, some pausing in their migration from feeding

grounds in Antarctic waters to breeding grounds in the warm

sub-tropical seas of the Pacific Ocean, north of New Zealand.

Robert Fyffe established the first shore-whaling station,

Waiopuka, in 1843; other stations were built soon 

after in South Bay...

This is what remains today.

 Kaikōura, on the Marlborough coast, is isolated by mountains

 and hills to both north and south. Before 1900 it had only bridle

 tracks north and south, and no rail connection in either direction 

until 1945. In the 1820s and 1830s Te Rauparaha and his allies

 attacked Ngāi Tahu here. Ngāi Tahu retained its mana in the district,

 but numbers slowly fell. Early Pākehā settlers, many of Irish origin, 

struggled to clear the forest and create swamp-free pastures. 

Kaikōura languished for over a century. On 15 December 1945 

the Christchurch–Picton railway was opened at Kaikōura in front 

of an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 5,000. From 1962 the roll-on, 

roll-off ferry between Wellington and Picton brought more freight 

and passenger traffic, both road and rail. The undersea Kaikōura 

Canyon brings abyssal depths and sperm whales close to the coast, 

and whale watching has been a major tourist attraction since the 1980s.

This is today's modern bus and fleet of boats that takes people

to see the whales. 

Due to the pressure of the whaling industry, whale numbers

steadily declined after 1850 and it became uneconomic to

exploit them. Today, with marine mammals in New Zealand

being fully protected, the whales again find Kaikoura a safe

environment. Kaikoura is now internationally renowned as a

whale-watching location.

The Kaikōura (Te Tai ō Marokura) Marine Management

Act came in to effect in August 2014. The Act established

the Kaikoura Marine Management Area which integrates

a number of marine protection and sustainable fisheries

measures in the Kaikōura marine environment. These include

a marine reserve, a whale sanctuary, a fur seal sanctuary, two

taiāpure (one of which surrounds the Kaikōura peninsula),

three mātaitai and new fishing regulations.